Have you ever tried to make, and bake, an upside-down cake?
LIKE MANY PARENTS, I started making up stories and rhymes for my daughter when she was little. Kids are a great guide to what’s engaging and what isn’t. They love ridiculousness and word play. They make an appreciative but critical audience. If they’re bored or antsy, they can’t help but show it. If they’re tickled, they laugh.
You can gauge the appeal of a story or poem by how well the child remembers it and how often she asks for it. Kids provide an ongoing education in the power of simplicity, repetition, and surprise. Reading aloud to them alerts you to stumbles and awkward moments you missed on the page.
Parenthood helps you become a better writer in many other ways. Loving your own child teaches you to love all children. (Same with dogs.) Having a child intensifies your emotional range: there’s no feeling quite like the surge of panic that comes over you in a mall when you turn around and she’s gone. Being a parent deepens your empathy as you learn to understand and relate to your child's experiences and emotions. Empathy surely translates into more authentic and relatable characters in your writing.
Patience and perseverance are essential to a writer, and a child forces you to develop those qualities. The broader perspective you gain as you reflect on your child’s future, and their (and your) past, is the beginning of wisdom. The centrality of family has, of course, been a literary staple forever. A vivid imagination is central to the writing of fiction, and children turn up the pilot light of creativity that burns in us all.
The author of, and inspiration behind, such classics as “The Glurb,” “The Mighty Ning-Ning,” and “Why Do I Have a Bum?”
I’ve been generalizing with the second-person “you,” but of course I’m really talking about myself—what I’ve felt, and how my view of life, and the world, and my writing, has evolved since my daughter was born 28 years ago. When she was young, she stimulated in me periods of fevered creativity. Poems and songs would come spilling out, one after another.
The poem below was one of her favourites. When I read it to her Grade 2 class at school, the teacher had them draw a picture of what they’d just heard and gave me the collection of drawings as a gift. Alas, I’ve moved a couple of times since then and can’t locate them at the moment, but here’s the poem that inspired them.
THE UPSIDE-DOWN CAKE
An upside-down girl named Anna
Thought it might be fun to make
A birthday surprise for her mother
She decided on upside-down cake.
With help from her upside-down father
And time for some upside-down huggin’
She got Mom’s cake all ready to bake
And opened the upside-down oven.
Before long the cake was ready
It turned out a butterscotch brown
With oven mitts, she removed it to cool
Then tipped it out, upside down.
Looks perfect, Anna’s dad told her
What a fabulous job you’ve done
Let’s go wake up your mother
My, this is going to be fun!
They put the cake on a beautiful plate
And stuck candles all around
Anna tiptoed, holding it steady
Which is hard when you’re upside down.
She woke her upside-down mother
Happy birthday, Mom! Surprise!
My gosh, said her still-sleepy mother
I can’t believe my upside-down eyes!
She blew out all the candles
And gave Anna a great big hug
Let’s eat it at the table, she said
So we don’t leave crumbs on the rug.
Notice anything different? said Anna
Your birthday cake’s upside down!
We baked it so that you turn it out
By flipping the whole thing around.
But it’s not upside down, said her mother
It didn’t turn out as you thought
When we’re right-side up, the cake’s upside down
But when we’re upside down, it’s not.
I wrecked it, cried upside-down Anna
I’m sorry, I ruined your cake
Why didn’t we think of that sooner
Before Dad and I started to bake?
It’s the thought that counts, said her father
Too bad, but I’m sure it tastes good
Come on, have a piece, who really cares
If it didn’t turn out as it should.
Wait a second, said Anna, I’ve got an idea
We could stop being upside-down
We could leave the cake just as it is
And turn everything else around.
That’s brilliant, said Anna’s mother
You’re not only thoughtful but smart
There’s an upside-down head on those shoulders
To go with your upside-down heart.
They began turning everything over
Which caused a considerable fuss
They flipped mirrors and stairs and beds and chairs
But left the cake just as it was.
It wasn’t long till they’d finished
And changed everything around
Now that the whole house was right-side up
The cake really was upside down.
They ate it with gusto and pleasure
And laughed at the silly mistake
The cake tasted all that much better
Because they’d been forced to wait.
Thank you, said Mom, for your present
We’ve learned a good lesson indeed
When you find yourself in an upside-down world
Common sense may be all that you need!
P.S. Anyone want to feed this poem into an AI image generator and see what marvels the magic machine spews out? Has AI evolved to the point that it can produce suitable children’s book illustrations? We’ll go halves on the book.
P.P. S. My post last week about my vanished schoolmate Kenneth Owen prompted some unexpected responses, including one from an old friend who happened to have had lunch with Ken and his father in Stratford on Avon in England not too long before his disappearance—the last time Ivon laid eyes on his son.
I was also fact-checked that Ken’s younger brother Gerald did not have any children (I referred to him as a husband and father). Someone else said that the Owen family planned to meet up in Rome, not London as I wrote. Another person heard that Ken had gone to Ireland and been blown up in a bombing, his remains never identified. Yet another spoke confidently of a fatal drug overdose.
I was reminded of an experiment I’d been part of in a university course. I was given the first half of a book to read (author and title anonymized). The principal characters were an English couple on a train in France, on a mysterious mission that was tense and disquieting. I then had to return the book, tell student #2 exactly what I’d read, and speculate about how I thought the story might proceed in the second half of the book.
I was student #11 in the chain (as well as student #1), and when #10 gave me her account, it bore zero resemblance to what I’d told #2. Zilch. No trace of my original account remained: not a couple, a name, a train, a sense of mystery, a setting.
The world is a game of telephone. Life is a mystery. RIP Kenneth Owen.
Absolutely love your poem.
I've been collecting children's books for years, well before my daughter was born. I love the simplicity and innocence of them, and the lessons for both young and older in them.
Why not compile all those stories and poems in a Children's Book with illustrations? Perhaps incorporate those original drawings from grade 2, if ever found. Or, procure a professional illustrator.